I set the last of the glasses on the dining room table, and quickly filled them with water from the pitcher in the center of the table. I'd assured my dad that Lisa wouldn't be expecting anything fancy, but he'd still felt compelled to dig out one of Mom's old tablecloths and drape it over the scuffed-up stained brown wood of the table. The yellow-flower print of the tablecloth had faded with age, but still dressed up the room adequately enough. I'd laid out plates and napkins. The whole array felt slightly unnatural. I couldn't remember the last time we'd made an even remotely formal attempt at a meal. Dad usually didn't have the patience for that stuff, and I'd taken my example from him.

Dad lifted cartons of steaming-hot Chinese food from the takeout bag and plunked them down in the center of the table. After doing so, he seemed to have second thoughts.

"Is Lisa the type to run late?" he said. "If so, I'll keep the food in the bag. Wouldn't want her meal to get cold."

"I'd leave it out," I said. "She's almost ridiculously punctual."

"That's a sign of good character," he said. I rolled my eyes.

"Dad, we're teenagers. 'Character' is something old people complain we don't have enough of."

He laughed. "Better watch who you're calling old," he said. "I've still got a few years left in me."

A whirl of displaced air buffeted the bugs I'd left hovering on the front path as someone, undoubtedly Lisa, made their way up to the door. A slight feeling of unease tingled in my stomach. Lisa was a friend, and I certainly didn't have to worry about her misreading the situation and accidentally giving away more information than she should've, but mixing my cape life and my home life still felt like a disaster waiting to happen. There was no earthly way Dad would ever be okay with me going out as a cape, but I wouldn't give it up, either. If the secret somehow got out and things came to a head, I didn't know how I'd handle it.

I breathed in deep. Those questions, I could worry about another time. Fretting over some overdramatic hypothetical wouldn't do me any good.

"Don't worry, Taylor, I promise I can make it through a dinner without embarrassing you in front of your friend," Dad said with a smile.

"I'll be the judge of that," I said. He'd mistaken the cause of my worry, but I was still glad he'd noticed. As for what he'd said, the prospect of parentally-induced humiliation didn't concern me very much. If you can face down a knife-wielding pyromaniac alongside someone, the little things don't seem quite as important.

The soft chime of the doorbell rang out. I stepped over to open the door. "Heya," Lisa said. Of course, she hadn't shown up in her trenchcoat. She wore a cheerily colorful shirt, over which she'd tossed a dark spring jacket, complemented by a factory-stressed pair of skinny jeans. She looked every inch the civilian.

"Mmmm, I smell Chinese. Mind if I invite myself in?" she said. She stepped inside, and patted her stomach. "I've been working up an appetite all day, just for this."

"You may be disappointed," I said.

"Hah! Not a chance. The greasier and smellier, the better. Just watch me." She turned towards Dad. "Oh, you must be Mr. Hebert!" she said, breaking out what she'd no doubt call one of her best smiles. "Thanks for having me over. You guys have a lovely house."

Dad smiled, and returned Lisa's wave. "Our pleasure, Lisa. Thanks for joining us. It's nice to meet you."

"The pleasure's all mine," Lisa said. "I'd curtsey, but that looks kinda weird in jeans."

Dad laughed. "This isn't that kind of house, anyways," he said. "Right, Taylor?"

"I think I read about curtseying in a book once," I said. "C'mon, let's sit down."

After sitting and heaping our plates with food, we promptly dug in. Soon came the question I'd been dreading.

"So, Lisa," my dad asked, "you go to Arcadia too?

Lisa's smile was utterly without guile, which, of course, spoke to the sheer amount of guile she had brought to bear.

"Yup, you betcha," she said. "Taylor landed in a couple of my classes when she transferred over, and I can never resist bugging the new people. I'm incurably curious."

My dad laughed. "Arcadia seems like a great school," he said. "I'm very grateful that Taylor managed to transfer out of Winslow. The staff there-well, it wouldn't be polite to say what I think of them with you two around."

"Bureaucrats get away with murder," Lisa said. "And those are only the lowest of low-level public servants. Imagine what the higher-ups in the PRT have covered up. That'd be enough skeletons to fill an entire buildingful of closets."

"I'd like to think that if they do keep those kinds of secrets, it's for good reason," I said.

"Me too," Dad said. "They are the good guys, after all. We've got no choice but to trust them, as far as I can see it."

Lisa waved a hand. "Don't let me pollute your minds. I was already a cynic when I came out of the womb, and honestly, it's only gotten worse since. I'm probably the most jaded person in the whole city by a mile."

"Maybe I should have you sit in on my union negotiations," my dad said with a chuckle. "You've got to be a born cynic to walk out of talks with the shipping companies in one piece. It gets ugly in there."

"Oooh, I love a good verbal sparring session," Lisa said. "You have to hone your repartee to keep it sharp, right? Maybe I should go into organized labor when I graduate."

"You'd be wasted on a bunch of knuckle-draggers like us," Dad said. "Take it from me, Lisa, the local's not what it used to be. Too many of my guys have signed on with the Empire already. I'd like to tell myself that it's purely mercenary, so they can put food on the table, but a lot of people struggling to make ends meet find the us-versus-them rhetoric compelling. My guys sense that prospects now are worse for them than they used to be, and that gets some of them searching for someone to blame." He sighed. "Makes it awfully hard to convince them that they're throwing in with the wrong guys. A few more years, and the Empire may have hollowed out the local completely."

My dad had mentioned somebody he knew joining up with Empire Eighty-Eight from time to time, but I hadn't realized that things were crumbling to the point he'd described. Had he not mentioned it, or had I, distracted by all my own problems, simply not been paying attention? I honestly didn't know.

"Brockton Bay still has a lot of heroes," I said. "Do you think the Empire has the ability to take over completely? I have to imagine that there'd be a response from the Protectorate before things got that bad."

"You're probably right, Taylor," my dad said. "Sorry, kids, I shouldn't be prognosticating during dinner. You've got enough to worry about with your schoolwork."

"Oh, I don't mind," Lisa said. "I like to stay informed. I guess you could call me kind of a news junkie. I have to agree with you, Mr. Hebert. The Protectorate may send in more heroes, but they can't appeal to people's wallets the same way the Empire can. What's worse, they can't appeal to that resentment, either. The heroes can catch some villains and lock them up, but if they lose the support of the public, they lose the city. Kaiser may be a scumbag, but he's an oily scumbag. He knows that if he keeps the real die-hard Nazis in line enough, he's got a good chance at winning over the people who normally wouldn't care enough to back him."

Dad blinked.

"You should think about journalism instead of organized labor, Lisa," he said. "That's a better summary of the situation than I've heard out of half the stuffed shirts on TV. Arcadia must be doing something right."

"Lisa's sort of an outlier," I said. "But school is a step up from Winslow."

"I'm a lucky guesser," Lisa said. "There's nothing else to it. Pardon me, but I'm going to stuff my face with this eggroll." She plucked a prodigious golden-brown egg roll off its platter with her chopsticks and bit into it with a ferocious crunch. I made a mental note to see if she could teach me how to use chopsticks. My dad was as hopeless with them as I was, and no matter how many online tutorials I read, I could never get the things quite right.

The rest of dinner passed fairly uneventfully. Thankfully, we managed to keep any discussion of Arcadia focused on what I was doing there, rather than Lisa, and her parents didn't come up. After dinner, Lisa and I retreated upstairs to my room. The blare of an evening action movie emanated from the living room as we headed up the stairs, for which I was grateful, as it meant I didn't have to worry about Dad accidentally hearing any talk about powers. Having to suppress any mention of it had been hard enough in his presence. I doubted my ability to hold back from talking about cape business in private, and I doubted even more Lisa's ability to avoid the subject.

"So, this is it!" Lisa exclaimed as she crossed the threshold into my bedroom. "The lair of the notorious Taylor Hebert, unveiled at last. What a scoop!"

"It's really only a normal bedroom," I said. "I wouldn't recommend expecting to find anything interesting in here. Your place is way nicer."

"Sure, but this room has history," Lisa said. "Which is something that my apartment, while admittedly decorated with impeccable taste, sorely lacks. Places like this, that someone's molded into their own space and settled into it, can tell you so much more about a person." She flopped down on the bed. "Not that I'm using my power now, of course," she said. "No snooping on partners, after all. But you get what I'm saying, right? A new apartment doesn't have any memory."

"I think I do understand," I said. "Some of the furniture in here is almost as old as I am, and I know I've still got a few toys from when I was five stashed away in here somewhere."

"Exactly," Lisa said. "The way somebody furnishes a new place tells you a lot too, but rooms like this are like diaries. You can trace someone's entire life story."

I raised an eyebrow. "Does that mean you're reading my diary?"

"I'm trying really hard not to," Lisa said. "Scout's honor. But I did mean what I said about off switches, in more ways than one. My power doesn't so much turn on as it gets temporarily suppressed through sheer force of will. You can't not be aware of your bugs, right? It's the same deal for me. I don't think anyone whose powers have some kind of mental component can ever truly choose to simply turn them off, any more than we could turn off trying to breathe. Getting your brain rewired is no joke."

While listening to Lisa, I adjusted the position of the gnat I'd placed on the cuff of my dad's jeans. He hadn't moved from the chair, but his stretch had almost squished it. "I see your point," I said. "It's strange that I can do so many things at once, isn't it? To me, it feels as natural as breathing, but it must require active brainpower, right?"

"Please, no more tantalizing theories!" Lisa said. "I'm barely holding off a migraine as it is. I need to stuff my power down for a while longer. Once the pain recedes, I'm your girl. But have mercy for now, I'm begging you."

"If I have to," I said. I decided to broach the subject which had occupied my thoughts for most of the evening. "About earlier.."

Lisa quirked an eyebrow. "C'mon, spit it out," she said. "I'm only psychic when I want to be. Or, more accurately, I'm only not psychic when I want to be. You get the idea. Now, shoot."

"We stopped Circus, and I'm happy about that, don't get me wrong," I said. "But, like you said, she was just the Empire's pawn, wasn't she? It's not like they've got any shortage of muscle, cape or otherwise, to apply in their favor. If they want the clinics under their control, I have a hard time believing that they can't simply make it happen, Circus or no Circus. Did stopping her actually make any kind of difference?"

Lisa's sigh was good-natured, but freighted. "First, while I applaud your forward thinking, c'mon, lighten up! We just racked up our third consecutive successful case, and we still have all our digits attached." She waggled her right hand. "That's no small feat, you know." A ruminative tone crept into her voice, and her expression grew more serious. "You're a big girl, so I'm not going to lie to you. Frankly, if Kaiser wants to take over Downtown, he will. Like you said, the Empire has the size and willpower to muscle a whole conglomerate out of the city, if they wanted to. A couple rinky-dink non-profits don't have a snowball's chance in hell of hanging in there. I'm sorry I can't provide a better prognosis, but I have to call it how I see it."

"Doesn't that make this seem a bit futile?" I said. "I mean, if the stormtroopers will march in and take things over anyways. Was it worth all the effort?"

Lisa shrugged.

"I'm a parahuman, not a philosopher, and my power doesn't do those kinds of questions," she said. "Admittedly, and you probably don't need me to tell you this, but I'm a lot more cynical than you when it comes to questions of the common good, or helping your fellow man. We were hired to do a job, and we did it. With aplomb, I might add. If Krieg levels that place two months from now, that's a shame, but at least it wasn't today, right? We've done our part."

"I'd like to subscribe to that outlook, but I can't seem to shake the feeling that I could be doing more," I said. "That director and his staff are trying to make a difference in this city. How can I accept that they might inevitably get killed or run out of town by neo-Nazis?"

"If you don't pick your battles, you end up losing all of them," Lisa said. "We can make a difference in places the Protectorate might not - you've already seen that, more than once - but not even Eidolon can save everyone. Dwelling on what could've or should've been is a good way to drive yourself completely nuts."

"You're probably right," I said. "Sorry for the unsolicited morality introspective. Maybe it'll get easier with time."

"Take it from me, it does," Lisa said. A sad smile played across her face for a moment. "In the meantime, we're young and we've got superpowers. It could be worse, right?"

"It could and has been," I said. "I'll be okay. I've got some stuff to sort through, that's all."

I deliberately steered the conversation back to a less serious topic. Lisa undoubtedly noticed my redirection, but had the good grace to flow with it. We chatted for a while longer before Lisa took her leave. She stepped off into the night with a smile and a wave.

"I like her," my dad said after I closed the door behind her. "You can have her over any time."

"Thanks for providing the seal of approval, Dad," I said.

"And I didn't even embarrass you once, did I?" he said. His smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. "How's that for impressive?"

I shook my head with over-exaggerated mournfulness and headed upstairs.

A quick change and brush of my teeth later, and I was in bed. As I lay there, my mind drifted back to the concerns I'd voiced to Lisa earlier. I realized I'd started to think of Lisa as not only just someone who'd given me a helping hand, but also a friend. That in and of itself felt rather surreal, given that the wounds of my social ostracization had barely healed over. With the change in my perception of our dynamic, though, came the realization that I still knew essentially nothing about her personal life. Where her parents were, how she'd ended up in Brockton, her trigger event - they all coagulated together into a swirling fog of mystery.

I'd spent enough time with Lisa to guess that if I reached for that fog, it'd evaporate at the slightest brush of my fingertips. There was no teasing information out of Lisa in a conversation, and if she'd wanted to tell me the details, she already would've. All in all, my ignorance left me feeling at somewhat of a disadvantage in what I dared to hope she saw as our friendship. After all, we'd only met because I'd exposed the bleeding wounds in my life while begging for her assistance. Thanks to her power, her research, or both, she knew what'd I'd lost, what I'd been put through, even my trigger event. I couldn't keep real secrets from her, but she held plenty away from me.

A sudden surge of guilt welled up inside me, and I tried to banish my train of thought. Yes, there was a lot I didn't know about Lisa, but that hardly mattered right now. What I did know was that at my lowest moment, one where even beating the one-in-thousands odds of getting superpowers hadn't enabled me to turn my life around, she'd been there to yank me out of the hellhole my life had become. That counted for far more than any misguided worries I had over what she might not be telling me.

I turned out the light, and drifted away to sleep, wondering what kind of case would come our way next.